Anyone have trouble with amazon?

I

Insomniac

New member
Mar 3, 2007
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I always end up buying more books than I'm ever going to read...



Anyone got any on-topic recommendations?
 


[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Simply-SQL-Rudy-Limeback/dp/0980455251"]Amazon.com: Simply SQL (9780980455250): Rudy Limeback: Books[/ame]

..... an easy read if you know SQL.... great read if you're new to it.
 
Yeah have a few tech books I haven't even touched, lol.

Notably ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University, and Game Design with Flash.

Damn you Amazon!
 
I've never purchased a computer book, although I should...Do they actually help you learn better? I've always just used the internet and forums.
 
Books I found worth reading

Designing Virtual Worlds Designing Virtual Worlds
Richard Bartle
(psychology of users in mmo's)
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131018167/ref=oss_product"]Amazon.com: Designing Virtual Worlds (0076092022404): Richard Bartle: Books[/ame]

The Dream Manager
Matthew Kelly, Patrick Lencioni
(managing employees, easy read, great book)
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401303706/ref=oss_product"]Amazon.com: The Dream Manager (9781401303709): Matthew Kelly, Patrick Lencioni: Books[/ame]

High Performance MySQL [Illustrated]
Jeremy D. Zawodny (Author), Derek J. Balling (Author)
(mainly for profiling)
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596003064/ref=oss_product"]Amazon.com: High Performance MySQL (9780596003067): Jeremy D. Zawodny, Derek J. Balling: Books[/ame]
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672328550/ref=oss_product"][/ame]
 
megatabbers said:
Getting to Yes. Good choice. And I have the same problem as you: buy way too much stuff.

BTW... if you're into learning about negotiating you should look into the Karrass seminar (Negotiation Seminars and Negotiating Skills Training Programs - Karrass). I went to one last year in London and it was very good. Didn't know negotiating was such an art.
Click to expand...

Good shit :) Looks like there is one coming up pretty soon.

roclafamilia said:
I've never purchased a computer book, although I should...Do they actually help you learn better? I've always just used the internet and forums.
Click to expand...

Forums and blogs are typically full of misinformation. It's not that people do things wrong, they just tend to demonstrate the simplest method which never really teaches you anything. Books tend to be written by experts, or at least people who have spent a lot of time reading RFC's to make sure they are correct about what they are saying.

tainted said:
175 books on my Kindle and counting... all read :)
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Hah! Way too much time on your hands :P
 
roclafamilia said:
I've never purchased a computer book, although I should...Do they actually help you learn better? I've always just used the internet and forums.
Click to expand...

Oh, and I forgot to mention. Experts tend to drop little shortcuts all over the place in books you wouldn't otherwise notice. For example, in PHP to run a shell command you normally see something like this:

ob_start();
passthru('echo "hello world"');
$result = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

OR

$blah = '';
exec('echo "hello world"', $blah);
$result = implode("\n", $blah);

BUT you could simply do this.

$result = `echo "hello world"`

Or if you want to take something like MySQL. Typically group by would be something like this:

SELECT blah, count(*) AS cnt FROM sometable GROUP BY blah, ORDER BY cnt DESC

BUT you can back reference by number, so instead you could do

SELECT blah, count(*) AS cnt FROM sometable GROUP BY 1, ORDER BY 2 DESC

Or you might want to do something like this where you are forced to use count(*) in it's full since there WHERE won't know the alias.

SELECT blah, count(*) AS cnt FROM sometable WHERE count(*) > 10 GROUP BY 1, ORDER BY 2 DESC

Instead, it might be more efficient to do this:

SELECT blah, count(*) AS cnt FROM sometable GROUP BY 1, ORDER BY 2 DESC HAVING cnt > 10

Chances are you aren't going to learn little things like that in your casual browsing.
 
i've read at least half of the books OP posted in picture (mostly the scalability ones), and let me be the first to say that you'll learn it faster/better/easier/cheaper on the google.

programming collective intelligence was pretty cool to thumb through, if only for ideas on how to structure data. i found most of the algorithms weren't particularly novel.
 
uplinked said:
i've read at least half of the books OP posted in picture (mostly the scalability ones), and let me be the first to say that you'll learn it faster/better/easier/cheaper on the google.

programming collective intelligence was pretty cool to thumb through, if only for ideas on how to structure data. i found most of the algorithms weren't particularly novel.
Click to expand...

The problem isn't scaling code, but rather scaling developers. Chucking up servers, putting a few devs on Git or SVN, and micro profiling their SQL only goes so far. At some point you need to learn from other peoples processes for provisioning, authentication, staging, and profiling or you're going to want to shoot yourself in the head from all the stupid shit your devs pull.
 
Sooo...Do any of you find an advantage over physical books compared to the computer, or even kindle?

I'd imagine that reading a real book is a little nicer, you get to feel it, can highlight stuff easier, bookmark it, easier on your eyes, etc...but at the same times it's a physical thing that takes up space.
 
roclafamilia said:
Sooo...Do any of you find an advantage over physical books compared to the computer, or even kindle?

I'd imagine that reading a real book is a little nicer, you get to feel it, can highlight stuff easier, bookmark it, easier on your eyes, etc...but at the same times it's a physical thing that takes up space.
Click to expand...

Physical books...

I don't get distracted by easy access to google
I can leave them on the coffee table for a constant reminder to read them
Technical books are normally heavy and make good projectiles when someone pisses you off
Hard to lose

Electronic books...

Quick search for what you want
Don't take up any (noticeable) space
Can't always find technical books you want in electronic form
 
I get distracted fast when I read online. I start reading about Rails configuration and end up with Illuminati. So I buy them. Works for me.
 
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